Well, If you see something wrong, why not help him correct it, instead of just name-calling it "pseudo" or "stupid" or "spam"? I believe this site is supposed to be helpful not discouraging. Personally I enjoy looking at the related wordshapes and how they vary among the languages. It acquaints us to connections that otherwise are often not known or recognized.

Essorant wrote:Well, If you see something wrong, why not help him correct it, instead of just name-calling it "pseudo" or "stupid" or "spam"? I believe this site is supposed to be helpful not discouraging. Personally I enjoy looking at the related wordshapes and how they vary among the languages. It acquaints us to connections that otherwise are often not known or recognized.

The reason, Essorant, is because this has gone on for weeks, and Neos seems to refuse to hear reason on the matter. Altho, this thread of his is not as bad as others have been.

I believe we might be a bit more patient than some of us have here been, but the sentiment is justified. There are limits to patience. Moreover, I think the criticism that follows en masse after such posts is actually quite good and necessary; fears about newer members being confused at the pseudolinguistics of Neos's posts are immediately dissolved by their very expression.

on a positive note, the comments following Neos' posts have often been very informative for people who, like me, are ignorant of the relationship between latin and greek, as well as other languages referred to. it even prompted me to look up PIE on Wikipedia, which i surely would not have done, or at least not yet, were it not for the inflamatory postings of Neos.

plus, the resulting discussions tend to be quite amusing to those watching from the stands.

Why do you think I went up in flames from the word 'go' as it were? I could have told you that if you asked me you see. People like Neos never listen to reason, treat the one book that supports their views as Holy Writ and discard the others giving any number of reasons and, in a nutshell, they are not interested in correcting their mistakes (in this particular subject or similar -i.e. that Greeks are actually aliens, one my uncle is particularly fond of- ).
So the only thing you can do is either ban such (mis)users of the forum or reply giving the right etymology (or whatever; depends on the subject) so that others will know the truth without however expecting this will really change anything for the original poster.

Why do you think I went up in flames from the word 'go' as it were? I could have told you that if you asked me you see. People like Neos never listen to reason, treat the one book that supports their views as Holy Writ and discard the others giving any number of reasons and, in a nutshell, they are not interested in correcting their mistakes (in this particular subject or similar -i.e. that Greeks are actually aliens, one my uncle is particularly fond of- ).So the only thing you can do is either ban such (mis)users of the forum or reply giving the right etymology (or whatever; depends on the subject) so that others will know the truth without however expecting this will really change anything for the original poster.

I understand your sentiments, Irene. I share them.

However, believe it or not, we who oppose Neos are, in a way, just as guilty as Neos. Allow me to explain.

Neos is guilty of over-identifying with Hellenism. Believing collective Greek culture to be part of his very self, Neos unconsciously seeks to increase his sense of self by proliferating his interpretation of Hellenism, as he has identified with it. And part of this collective Greek "ego" is that Greek is of course the source of all words, et cetera.

This is the nature of the mind unaware: dominated by the ego; and the ego, always fearing annihilation, seeks to expand and to grow.

Now, on the other side of this debate, here we are, who identify with a much more "reasonable" sense of history and language, one which even shuns such illogic as that of Neos. In fact, our collective identity as "enlightened" linguists depends upon our alienation of "ignorant" ones like Neos, which means that we form our identity from making Neos and his ideas our enemy.

So when Neos presents ludicrous concepts such as "milk" being a word of Greek origin, we balk. We shun. We feel our sense of self, our identity is being attacked. And it is. The error was in believing that our identity was us.

We are not the things with which we identify ourselves. We are not limited to thoughts, forms, or creeds. We fear annihilation, because we believe we are fragile material possessions, fragile bodies, fragile concepts capable of succumbing to attack. Yet that is not what we are. We are the awareness behind the events, the forms, the feelings.

So I understand your frustrations. But all such frustration, of which we have all been guilty at one time or other, comes from a sense of our prized knowledge being attacked by the "ignorant," our "enemies." In such times, we are dominated by ego. And the ego is not personal; that is to say, it is not who we are. We are the awareness in the background, the Watcher always watching.

When we are conscious and aware, then the good and the joy become visible. For example, altho you find the process of correcting Neos's mistakes annoying, I find it enlightening, since I then benefit from the knowledge of the origin of words whose etymologies I had not thought about prior in such detail. Good is to be found everywhere.

Uh.... yeah... no. I just said Neos' posts feel like spam because they are unsolicited. Instead of posting a query, or helping others with their Greek, or inviting people to join in this activity of searching for etymologies, he keeps writing new threads in this one-sided, I-am-the-teacher manner, when no one is asking to be taught.

Amadeus wrote:Uh.... yeah... no. I just said Neos' posts feel like spam because they are unsolicited. Instead of posting a query, or helping others with their Greek, or inviting people to join in this activity of searching for etymologies, he keeps writing new threads in this one-sided, I-am-the-teacher manner, when no one is asking to be taught.

Right.

There are a small set of Textkit visitors who are a serious pet-peeve of mine â€” the people who offer nothing to the Textkit community but instead parasitize what ÎºÎ»Î­Î¿Ï‚ (fame, reputation) Textkit has for their own sites. One guy has never said anything outside the Academy, and there only does drive-by inflammatory posts about once every two months.

Some moderator other than me is going to have to deal with Neos, though, if at all. I made an extensive comment to one of his blog posts, which was then completely deleted (his post and my comment). Yet he continues to duplicate his blog material here. He has used up all my good will. A cooler head should decide about him.

Lucus Eques wrote:Whoa! Will, sorry man, I really must have lacked clarity if you took what I said in that way.

I am easily mystified.

My purpose for the above post about identification: a lot of unnecessary negative emotions are produced when we, as human beings tend to do, over-identify with a form or an idea. These attachments can and do lead to strife, discord, even violence.

This is the center of our disagreement, I think. It's not clear to me at all that over-identification with an idea is the source of crankiness about Neos' etymologies.

I am not a relativist, and certainly not in matters of science. Not only am I fully convinced of a single truth, I believe we can come to know it.

Woah. I'm not prepared to go that far myself (the "knowable single truth" idea). I'll stick with statistical empiricism.

and all that identity talk I assumed you had been exposed to a lethal dose of some post-modern theoretical delirium.

I'm glad you liked it! I expect most people with an interest in Greek and Latin, even dilettantes such as myself, would eventually develop a taste for the well-turned phrase.

Well, in the way I was describing (which has nothing to do with etymology), we are; specifically, all people at one time or another are guilty of being emotionally attached to ideas and beliefs, concepts that may or may not be true.

Well, I'm not going to dispute that. However...

Finally, there are lots of good reasons to be annoyed when presented repeatedly with falsehood. If I ask someone if it's raining outside, and they mislead me, then I can get annoyed for reasons that have nothing at all to do with my self-concept or identity, though getting soaked might have an impact on my ego.

This is going tangentially away from the whole etymology thing entirely, but lets explore it.Why do you feel annoyed when you get soaked?

Well, you know, squooshy wet shoes are noisy and uncomfortable. If I had received good information I might have been able to avoid sloshing my way to a meeting or something. A minor nuisance, obviously.

So, you're not an epistemological relativist, despite the warning signs in the form of scare-quotes around the words reasonable and enlightened. And I still have no clear idea what doctrine involves the idea that we're not our egos, along with the Watcher. I have a very hard time seeing that as no more than random dilation on the subject of ego.

Of all the threads to throw out the phrase "we're just as guilty as so-and-so" in, this, I maintain, was the wrong one to do it in. From time to time we obtuse and information-poor disputes on political, religious and philosophical topics. In those some encouragement to step back and think about the passions seems in order â€” not when someone is spouting nonsense on a topic for which we have really firm foundations.

I've just finished The Power of Now and I think Lucus here is referring to the concepts presented in it or its sister book A New Earth. It's an interesting book and I definitely completed it feeling more enriched having (re)discovered the ability to stay mindful throughout my daily life instead of at specified times for meditation.